Talk about any and all other basketball video games including NBA Jam, NBA Street, college basketball games, and more. General basketball video game discussion and comparison topics are also welcome here.

I was thinking of Xseed Games in the city of Torrance in the USA. Even Haemimont Games in Sofia, Bulgaria should compete with NBA Live and NBA 2K, along with 2XL Games in Phoenix, Torus Games in Australia, Sobee Studios in Istanbul, Turkey and F4 in Paris, France. What other video game developers do you suggest?

At this point, I think it'd be difficult for anyone else to get into the game. Putting aside any issues with acquiring the license, basketball video games are way more complex than they used to be, with a demand for a very high level of realism. We've seen how starting from scratch and changing direction has hurt EA Sports with NBA Live in recent years, and they've been developing basketball games for over a quarter of a century. Anyone else who throws their hat into the ring is going to have to start from scratch, so their product is likely going to be very rough on the realism front. It would also remain to be seen whether they could arrange to get face scans done, not to mention broker a deal similar to the one EA has with Synergy Sports, and so on.

That's not to say that no one else should give it a go, but EA and VC both have a huge advantage in that they've got a lot of resources and framework in place already, as well as the necessary connections and pull with the league. I just think it would be pretty tough for another developer to get in on the market, compared to how it used to be when basketball games were more primitive. But it would be interesting to see it happen.

I wish Konami would come back and make an NBA game, from what I've seen in videos the last one was a solid and interesting game.

After following PES 2015 and playing it (which is a fantastic soccer game gameplaywise, much better than FIFA), I believe they have the tools to make at least a decent game; they have the new Fox Engine (as also seen in some MGS trailers) which would work well in next-gen consoles, the team tries to focus on sim gameplay with differentiation between teams and players, very nice visuals (from what I've seen in PES 2015 and MGS 5) and seeing that the company decided to install an office in Europe for PES makes me think that they would do the same if they decided to create a new NBA game which would benefit them if they put an office in USA. Perhaps they don't see that they have a chance to become competitive in the basketball market but then they seem to be happy enough to be in FIFA's shadow sales-wise.

The only problem I'd think that could happen is them getting the NBA license, I don't know how much is it but in PES Konami has struggled to compete against EA to gain the licenses of the EPL and Bundesliga although that happen mostly of EA's relationship with said leagues.

Corymach7 wrote:I've just contacted the NBA on making the licensing easy.

I was thinking a free to play NBA Sim on all consoles (including PC) and making In-App Purchases go straight to NBA Cares. Then add a team-building game and since it is non-profit, we may have a higher chance of getting retired legends into the game. Also I'm thinking using an all in one server so that no console dominates one another.

DaCrispy wrote:I am confused as to why a big European developer has never released a basketball game based on the Euroleague and Eurocup. Basketball is huge is eastern Europe and countries such as France and Spain

Cost of the license (or difficulty of acquiring it), and the challenge of designing a basketball game that meets contemporary expectations, I suppose.

I wouldn't mind Konami taking a crack at it if they can get the physics as good as they are in their latest few PES games. Of course they wouldn't have the licenses but I don't really care as a non-NBA fan, I just want the best gameplay and I'm sure people would mod it on both PC and consoles so they could add in real teams/players. There's a lot of sim players on NBA games who would probably love it.